HAVING already disrupted the social order and strained the
scarce resources of some African states, terrorists are now opening another flank by
targeting judicial officials as they attempt to further erode the legitimacy of
states.

A few days ago, Egypt’s state prosecutor Hisham Barakat
was assassinated in a Cairo car bombing, the most senior government official
killed in the North African country’s jihadist insurgency yet.

In May, three Egyptian judges
were shot dead in the northern Sinai city of al-Arish, targeted while
travelling by car, hours after deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was sentenced to death.

Their deaths came as Egypt’s
affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group urged its
followers to attack judges, in a scenario that could play out elsewhere in the
region where the caliphate has links, with Nigeria most at risk but eastern
Africa not exempt.

Sinai has been the setting of a jihadist insurgency launched in
2013 after the army,
under now-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s command, overthrew Morsi. Another
judge had days earlier survived an assassination attempt.

Jihadists
have since then killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in Sinai, which was this week the setting for a brazen surprise attack by
Islamic State fighters where scores were killed, many of them soldiers.

Militants
took over rooftops and fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in
the town of Sheikh Zuweid after mining its exits to block reinforcements,
exposing the army’s lack of expertise in fighting the
increasingly-sophisticated insurgents.

While
judicial officials in North Africa are frequently targeted by militants, until now the targeting of judicial officials by
terrorists in sub-Saharan Africa has been rare, confined to Somalia where at
least two Somalia judges are known to have been killed over the last two years,
the most recent in June 2014.

The killing of Mozambican judge Dinis Silica a month earlier was
not linked to terrorism.

Uganda prosecutor killed

But in March, the top Ugandan state prosecutor in the trial of
13 men accused of a deadly Al-Shabaab bomb attack, was shot dead in the capital
city of Kampala.

Joan Kagezi, like Barakat, was gunned down as she drove her home by
gunmen who had been trailing her on a motorcycle.

Uganda is a key contributor to the African Union mission
fighting Al-Shabaab inside Somalia. The militants, who have in the past week
scored a succession of victories against AU and government troops, regularly
target countries which contribute soldiers to the peacekeeping force.

The trial of the men, in connection with the 2010 Kampala
suicide bombing which killed 76 people who were watching football, has been
suspended.

Her
killing sparked concern in neighbouring Kenya, which is also trying several terrorists
in its courts.

The
country’s director of public prosecutions, Keriako Tobiko, termed Kagezi’s
murder as a big blow to efforts made in fighting terrorism in the region.

“The
demise of Ms Kagezi, the lead prosecutor in the Al-Shabaab terrorist case in
Uganda underscores the need for governments to urgently look into the security
of prosecutors, investigators and judicial officers handling emerging and
transnational organised crimes,” he said in a condolence message, urging Kenyan
authorities to better secure its judicial officials.

Al-Shabaab is not known to be affiliated to ISIS, but has more
than once been said to be mulling over the possibility. But Nigeria’s Boko
Haram earlier this year pledged allegiance to ISIS, which could also serve to
put judicial officials there on notice.

The
targeting of judicial officers is meant to prevent authorities from pursuing trials or forcing them to hold them in, and to overreact, which would project that as also being lawless, thus undermining their constitutional legitimacy and further drawing public sympathy to the terrorist
cause.

In
Egypt, it is already having the required effect. Authorities this week
responded to the growing insurgency by passing a controversial anti-terror law
and requesting the appeals process be shortened, in measures they said would
“achieve swift justice and revenge for our martyrs”.

An
infuriated Sisi, facing his first real challenge to power, has pledged to
enforce death sentences more swiftly, complaining that the speed of justice had
been held back by the law.

“The hand of justice is
shackled by the law. We’re not going to wait for this,” he said. “We’re
going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as
possible.”

“A death sentence will be
issued, a death sentence will be implemented. A life sentence will be issued, a
life sentence will be implemented,” he said.

Egyptians
have until now wearily supported a crushing crackdown of challenges to Sisi’s
authority, which has seen hundreds killed and even more sentences to death,
while tens of thousands have been detained.

The
situation will be closely watched to see if the spectre of even more repression
will stir unease with brutal regime methods which even the UN has faulted, and
which threaten to further sink the country into more turmoil.

Nigeria troubles

Nigeria’s
government was elected largely on a security platform, with new president
Muhammadu Buhari, an ex-military man, expected to snuff out the six-year threat
out for good.

But
as he sets up his regime, Boko Haram has killed 200 people just in the last two days, suggesting an uphill road even for the military man known to
have during his first stint in power in the 1980s instilled order in a chaotic
Nigerian society.

The
militants have also roped in neighbouring countries, with Niger, Chad and
Cameroon in the frontline, and consequently exposing their internal
institutions to counter-attack.

Kenya
and Uganda have in recent years also tightened up their spaces, with the latter
seen to have accidentally morphed into a soft military state as a spate of
horror attacks by Al-Shabaab last year shook its national foundations.

More
attacks on judiciaries are a fresh headache that already-strained African
states would rather do without, as they scramble to fight back an enemy that
has increasingly evolved and is seemingly now a moving target, while simultaneously courting public support for strong-arm tactics.